Tile helps keep tabs on your personal belongings!

Tile taps the cloud to help keep tabs on your personal belongings

US startup talks crowdfunding, Low Energy Bluetooth, Android and privacy issues around tracking your belongings!

Tile's product is a Bluetooth Low Energy-toting tile that attaches to personal possessions

The obvious question to ask new technology startups is what problem they're solving. Tile has a clear answer to that: it wants to help people stop losing their keys, wallets, handbags and other possessions.

It's far from the first company with that ambition. "There've been a lot of these devices on the market for many years," says Tile's co-founder and chief operating officer Mike Farley.

"People just weren't using them. But with so many attempts, you know there's a big market for it. And when Bluetooth Low Energy came out for the iPhone, it got us thinking that technology might have finally caught up to the problem."

Tile's product is a combination of software and hardware. The latter are small, tile-shaped Bluetooth tags designed to stick onto devices, hang from keyrings or sit within a bag or purse.

The software is an iOS app for people to manage up to 10 of the tiles, tracking their location if they're within Bluetooth range, and sending out an alert if they're further afield, to see if they're within range of anyone else running the Tile app.

This distributed network is one of the key features for Tile: other people can't see the location of your tiles unless you explicitly allow them to, but if they have the app running in the background and your tile is nearby, you'll be able to see where it is.

"That's the game-changing technology: the fact that it's not just you, your device and your tiles," says Farley. "It's about the way it's attached to an account in the cloud, and everyone else is connected."

Farley and his co-founder Nick Evans quit their previous jobs in November 2012 after producing the first prototypes for Tile, then launched a crowdfunding campaign through their own website in June 2013, hoping to raise $20,000 in pre-orders.

One month later, 49,586 people had pre-ordered nearly $2.7m worth of the tiles, which start at $18.95 for one, rising to $170.55 for 12. Shipping is expected to start late this year or early in 2014.

Farley says that Evans' previous experience working on smart-watch Pebble and keyless lock Lockitron – the former crowdfunded on Kickstarter, and the latter through its own site – made crowdfunding a logical choice for Tile too.

"It was always on the roadmap right from the super-early prototypes," he says. "And we knew if we did a selfstarter, we would be in control: we could get all our ducks in a row, stick to our schedule and not have any more hiccups than we already know we'll probably have."

Tile's business model is based on replacement hardware. The tiles are designed to last for a year, with customers sent a reminder when that date is approaching to order new ones, and sent an envelope to recycle the old ones.

Farley says ease-of-use is one reason for this approach: no need to buy new coin cell batteries and manually replace the existing one, although I suspect a fair few people will be experimenting to see how easy this is nonetheless.

"We thought long and hard about it, and we were very convinced that one year is the right amount of time," says Farley, who says the recycling aspect is also an important part of the company's plans.

"Whenever I have old batteries sitting on a counter, I think 'I'm going to dispose of that properly', and they just start to build up," he says.

"That's another hassle, another problem that you're giving the users. In general, the best computer services from start to finish make your life easier. Maybe you have to pay a little bit more, but it's not giving you extra problems."

The annual replacement cycle should go hand-in-hand with improvements to the actual tiles: Farley mentions a continual drive to get them slimmer, as well as bringing the price down.

"As Bluetooth Low Energy comes down in price and more hardware manufacturers develop more of these chips, they're going to get cheaper, and as more devices get built, a lot of the components around it get cheaper," he says.

"We want to keep the quality up, but get the cost down so we can hit more markets. We want this to be everywhere: not just in the United States and developed countries."

Tile's iPhone app manages up to 10 tiles at a time

One flaw in the distributed network of Tile users is the fact that its app is iOS-only. Once tiles stray out of their owner's Bluetooth range, the network is only as useful as the number of people in it. For now, hundreds of millions of Android devices are shut out of that network.

Are Tile just Cupertino-blinkered Apple fanboys blind to the realities of smartphone market-share? Actually, the company says the lack of Android support is down to technical issues around Bluetooth Low Energy technology.

"At this time Android does not support Bluetooth 4.0. A few Android phone manufacturers have released BLE SDKs, however they are lacking in quality and stability," explains the Tile website, which adds that "solid Bluetooth 4.0 support on Android" will be the trigger to "start making plans" to port the Tile app to Android.

"We thought long and hard again, and did our research on Android, but it comes back to providing the best user experience," says Farley.

"We want to deliver on that strong, whatever platform we're on. We know that we can deliver it on iOS but Android is just… it's not really there. So we're going to concentrate on creating a rock-solid iOS app, and once the time is right we will go ahead and build an app for other platforms."

Farley also praises Apple for some of the new features in its upcoming iOS 7 software to make Bluetooth Low Energy "more usable and richer from an app development standpoint", including the under-the-radar (to non-developers) iBeacons location feature.

Another obvious question for Tile concerns privacy, including the 'can someone hack this to be able to track all the things I've attached tiles to?' question – unanswerable until the product ships – but also the possibility of people using tiles to track not their own belongings, but other people.

"It's one of those unfortunate realities of any technology, right? They can almost always be used for harm as well. But the exact same thing can be done with a normal phone," says Farley.

"You can throw a phone in someone's purse and try to keep track of them, or buy a GPS tracker. But we do have some ideas that we're brainstorming on how to potentially pinpoint these types of situations."

Unsurprisingly, he can't say more for now. My last question is a more philosophical one, though, relating to an alternative method of not losing important personal objects: remembering where you put them down in the first place.

Is there a concern about the way Tile delegates this task to our devices (and the cloud), removing responsibility for us to take care of our belongings? You could ask similar questions about Gmail, Evernote and other cloud services, of course.

Farley fields the question with grace. "In a lot of ways it does make us a little bit less responsible, but then I think about how I remember things by writing them down rather than just remembering them. Writing lists puts my brain at rest, and I'm able to think about the important things," he says.

"And I consider Tile the same type of thing. You can only think about so many things at once, and remembering where your phone, your son's teddy bear, your Reebok sneaker is? That's not really productive for society. It's much easier to let a technology take care of that, freeing you up to think about the things that really matter."

Source: The Guardian

Zap Away Would-Be Attackers With This 3800kv Anti-Rape Bra!

Feeling unsafe? Switch on your protective lingerie.

Anti-Rape Bra 

SHE via BBC

In the wake of a highly publicized series of brutal rapes in India, a group of engineering students devised a way to help women deter sexual assault: Make their underwear a weapon.
Manisha Mohan, a 20-year-old student at SRM University in Chennai, developed an undergarment called the "Society Harnessing Equipment," or SHE, with two of her friends in response to the December gang rape of a 23-year-old student in Delhi.
The white nightgown's bra area is lined with pressure sensors calibrated to differentiate between more violent actions like squeezing, pinching or grabbing as opposed to say, hugging. Women can switch the garment on when they feel they might be unsafe. If the pressure sensor is activated, SHE sends a 3800kv electric shock through the garment, up to 82 times. The wearer is insulated from the shock by a polymer lining on the inner side.
It's also designed to alert others of the danger by sending a text message to a family member or friend and to the police with the wearer's GPS location.
The team is still working out a few kinks, like figuring out how to make it machine washable, and Mohan told the BBC they'd like to make the electronics smaller and link them to a smartphone app through Bluetooth.
"My vision is to see every women [sic] walking confidently on the streets in all parts of the world, even at odd hours," Mohan told the BBC.

The First Artificial Pancreas!

An easier way for diabetics to control their insulin intake

MiniMed® 530G with Enlite® 

Medtronic

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved its first "artificial pancreas" to automatically control the insulin levels of diabetics. (You know, before the shutdown furloughed almost half of its staff.)
The hormone insulin controls blood sugar levels and is normally produced in the body by the pancreas. But in Type 1 diabetics (and sometimes Type 2), the pancreas just doesn't make insulin, meaning diabetics' bodies can't regulate blood sugar levels. This system, designed by Minneapolis-based medical tech company Medtronic, is a wearable little gadget that stops insulin delivery automatically when glucose levels get too low, hopefully keeping the wearer from going into a diabetic coma.
With a traditional pump, the device can keep delivering insulin even when the your blood sugar is too low, lowering levels even further and sometimes causing loss of consciousness. This is especially dangerous during sleep, when you can't exactly gauge your own blood sugar. Medtronic's MiniMed 530G system can detect up to 93 percent of hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) episodes, and will sound an alarm to wake you up if your blood sugar gets too low. If you don't respond, the system will shut off insulin delivery for two hours, hopefully staving off dangerously low blood sugar levels.
One caveat: Medtronic got a warning letter from the FDA only a few weeks ago related to manufacturing processes of their Paradigm Insulin Infusion Pumps (which are used in this system) at their facility in Northridge, Calif. The pumps had been recalled in June because they were malfunctioning and delivering either too much or not enough insulin, and the FDA found the company was not doing enough to verify that the failure wouldn't happen again. The company said in the press release accompanying the product approval that it had "already addressed many of the observations noted in the warning letter and is committed to resolving the remaining observations as quickly as possible."

FYI: What Are Cruise Missiles, And How Do They Work?

Everything you ever wanted to know about this retro-'90s weapon, which the Obama administration might use against Syria's government.

Tomahawk Cruise Missile 

U.S. Navy

The Obama administration is considering what sort of military action to take, if any, against the government of Syrian President Bashar al Assad, which stands accused of using chemical weapons against its own people. The most likely option: a cruise missile strike against assorted military and government sites, like the presidential palace and chemical munitions facilities. Here's a primer on cruise missiles.
What are cruise missiles?
Cruise missiles are fast-moving, guided bombs that soar at a very low trajectory, parallel to the ground. They are distinct from regular (non-cruise) missiles primarily because they go really far. They are also distinct from drones, because they do not have on-the-ground pilots--instead, they fly a pre-set path--and you can only use them once. Germany used the first cruise missile in World War II. Called V-1s, after Vergeltung, the German word for retribution, they were fired from sites in northern France and aimed at London. The idea behind the V-1, which is the core idea behind all cruise missiles since, is to attack from far away without needing a pilot to control it.

V-1 Rocket 

A V-1 cruise missile at the London Imperial War Museum. These were the first cruise missiles ever made. 

Florestan, via Wikimedia Commons

How do cruise missiles work?
All cruise missiles have an internal guidance system, though the types vary. The Tomahawk cruise missile, which the U.S. Navy has deployed since 1984, uses a system called "Terrain Contour Matching," where an altimeter and an inertia detector plot the flight path against a pre-loaded terrain contour map. Later versions of the Tomahawk also use GPS, and there are other guidance systems that some cruise missiles use.
Cruise missiles all have basically the same parts: an engine, often a jet with an air intake, propels the missile through the air. There's a spot for fuel, and a spot for the warhead, or explosive carried inside. Both cruise missiles pictured below were designed to carry nuclear warheads, but most cruise missiles, and all that have actually been used in war, carry conventional, non-nuclear explosives. The front end of a cruise missile usually has a guidance system. Cruise missiles, with wings and engines, often resemble pilot-less planes.
Cruise missiles can be launched by airplanes, submarines, ships, or from launching vehicles on land. Besides the United States, more than 70 nations have cruise missiles.

Snark Missile 

A Cold War-era cruise missile. 

U.S. Air Force

Has the United States used cruise missiles before?
Oh, yeah. If the drone is the signature weapon of the 2000s and 2010s, cruise missiles were the go-to in the 1990s. Deadly, launched from far away, and without a pilot on board, they promised to destroy enemies without risking American casualties. Here are three American cruise missile strikes from the 1990s:
In 1993, Kuwaiti authorities foiled a plot by Iraqi Intelligence services to assassinate former President George H.W. Bush. In retaliation, President Bill Clinton ordered the firing of 23 cruise missiles at Iraqi intelligence headquarters. In 1998, President Bill Clinton ordered a cruise missile strike against the El Shifa Pharmaceutical Industries plant in Sudan, under the assumption that it was a chemical weapons plant. Also in 1998, Clinton ordered troops to fire cruise missiles at Osama bin Laden in the Khost province of Afghanistan. Both of these 1998 attempts were retaliation for the bombing of U.S. embassies in East Africa.
What were the consequences?
Following the 1993 strike, Iraq and the United States existed in a state of simmering hostility for the next decade. America (together with the United Kingdom and, for some of the time, France) imposed a "no-fly-zone" over the country, to prevent Iraqi's government from attacking Kurds in the north and Shi'ites in the south. The no-fly-zone was deeply problematic: Iraqi anti-air missiles occasionally fired at American aircraft overhead, and Americans bombed Iraqi anti-air missile sites in return. It only ended with the overthrow of Saddam Hussein following the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Tensions and violence in Iraq persist to this day.
The El Shifa Pharmaceutical Industries destroyed by the United States in 1998 was in fact actually just a pharmaceutical plant. The ruins were left untouched and now serve as a shrine to American incompetence.
The cruise missile strike in Khost failed to kill Osama bin Laden; a mission that would take 13 more years, a ground invasion of Afghanistan, a decade-long man-hunt, and a special kill team of Navy SEALS to complete. From the National Security Archives, there is also evidence that "the strikes not only failed to hurt Osama bin Laden but ultimately may have brought al-Qaeda and the Taliban closer politically and ideologically."

Advanced Cruise Missile 

An all-but retired missile. It is stealthy and carries a nuclear warhead. 

U.S. Air Force

What are cruise missiles' limitations?
A 2000 report by the U.S. Air Force on Tomahawk cruise missiles notes several limitations:

Although the consensus is that Tomahawks are a highly successful weapon, these weapons have several limitations. One of these is that their flight paths are relatively predictable, which is a function of the fact that some terrain, notably deserts, provides relatively few features for terrain following guidance. A second problem is that mission planning for terrain following guidance systems is more time consuming and complicated in terms of intelligence requirements than one might expect. For example, to use Tomahawks a unit would have to request a targeting package from such agencies as the Defense Mapping Agency to gather the data necessary for a mission. A third limitation was that Tomahawks could not be used against hardened targets because the 1,000 pound warhead, the weapon's accuracy, and its final kinetic energy when it hits the target do not produce high probabilities of kill. The final limitation was that Tomahawk cruise missiles cannot attack moving targets because they are guided to a position rather than to a specific target. Similarly, a Tomahawk cruise missile could not attack relocatable, that is mobile, targets because these may move while the mission is being planned or during the flight of the cruise missile.

Since then, cruise missile guidance systems have improved, but the overall limitations of the weapon system remain. The weapon requires good intelligence and good maps to hit the target. It also needs the enemy to stay in one, relatively vulnerable place.
Will the U.S. use cruise missiles in Syria?
It's not entirely clear. More certain is that idea that drones won't be used. Drones are great at tracking individuals from safe skies. But Syria's government has anti-aircraft weapons, which can easily shoot down drones. Cruise missiles, instead, fly faster, hit harder, and instead of hunting individuals take aim at big, fixed targets like military bases or palaces. Also, the United States has a lot of cruise missiles near Syria, and very few available drones.
Several publications, including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal expect the U.S. to use cruise missiles if the Obama administration does order strikes. Anonymous senior U.S. officials told NBC that a three-day cruise missile barrage against the Assad regime is possible. Of course, there's no guarantee that strikes will happen at all. Yesterday, President Obama said he had not made a decision on whether to intervene in Syria.
Launching cruise missiles feels like a strong military action for a president to take, but it's very unlikely to be a decisive one.

First Cloudy Alien Planet Spotted From Earth!

Artist’s conception of a cloud map of Kepler-7b (left) in comparison to Jupiter (right) 

NASA/JPL-Caltech/MIT Via Universe Today

Call it cloudy with a low chance of meatballs. The alien world Kepler-7b — a very reflective world in big telescopes — has clouds in its upper atmosphere. And scientists have actually been able to map those out, despite the planet’s great distance from Earth (at least 1,000 light-years away.)It’s the first time scientists have been able to map out clouds on a world outside of the solar system. If we can see clouds, then we can begin to think about what a planet’s climate will be, making this an important milestone in understanding the conditions on other worlds.
“Kepler-7b reflects much more light than most giant planets we’ve found, which we attribute to clouds in the upper atmosphere,” stated Thomas Barclay, Kepler scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center. “Unlike those on Earth, the cloud patterns on this planet do not seem to change much over time — it has a remarkably stable climate.”
Here’s how scientists got it done:

• Preliminary observations with the Kepler space telescope –which was designed to hunt planets until a second reaction wheel failed earlier this year — found “moon-like phases” on Kepler-7b. These showed a bright spot on the western  hemisphere.
• NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope measured Kepler-7b’s temperature using infrared light, calculating it at between 1,500 and 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit (815 and 982 degrees Celsius.)
• Something was clearly going on, as the planet is extremely close to its star; only 0.06 Earth-sun distances away. The temperature was too cool. They figured out that the light was reflected off cloud tops on the planet’s west side.

Another cool fact — Kepler-7b, like Saturn, would float if it was put in a big enough tub of water!
You can read more details in the technical paper online here. The study, which was led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been accepted to the Astrophysical Journal, but not published yet.

Source: NASA

Plastic ingredient found on Saturn's moon Titan!

A flash of sunlight reflected off a lake on Saturn's moon Titan was captured in this image captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft in 2009. Cassini recently detected a small amount of propylene in Titan's lower atmosphere. (REUTERS)

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has found propylene, a chemical used to make household plastic containers, on Saturn's moon Titan, the space agency said.

"This is the first definitive detection of the plastic ingredient on any moon or planet, other than Earth," NASA said.

A small amount of propylene was identified in Titan's lower atmosphere by Cassini's composite infrared spectrometer, which measures heat radiation, the agency reported in Monday's edition of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

By isolating the same signal at various altitudes within the lower atmosphere, researchers identified the chemical's unique thermal fingerprint with a high degree of confidence, NASA said.

"This chemical is all around us in everyday life, strung together in long chains to form a plastic called polypropylene," said Conor Nixon, a scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and lead author of the paper.

"That plastic container at the grocery store with the recycling code 5 on the bottom — that's polypropylene."

The chemical is also used to make car bumpers and other consumer products.

The discovery could help scientists understand the "chemical zoo" that makes up Titan's hazy brownish atmosphere, said Scott Edgington, Cassini's deputy project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency!

Valve's SteamOS coming!

In the first of three scheduled announcements for this week, Steam has unveiled a free operating system designed for the living room that the company promises will combine the rock-solid architecture of Linux with a gaming experience built for the big screen. It’ll be a combination of Steam’s current platform and Linux and according to company brass, there are hundreds of titles in the pipeline for next year.

With SteamOS, Valve said they have achieved significant performance increases in graphics processing. Moving forward, they are working on audio performance and reductions in latency at the operating system level.  The company said developers are already taking advantage of these gains as they target SteamOS for their new releases.

In addition to the new operating system, the company announced four new features that will be available for the current Steam platform in addition to SteamOS: family sharing, streaming, parental restrictions and options for media like movies and music.

SteamOS will be available soon as a free download for users and as a freely licensable operating system for manufacturers. The company encouraged fans to stay tuned in the coming days for more information.

With one announcement down and the foundation laid, one has to expect that at least one of the two pending announcements will be hardware-related. Talk of a Steam Box has been brewing for close to a year now and it’s no secret that Valve chief Gabe Newell intends to take on next generation consoles from Sony and Microsoft head-on.

Now use Bacteria to store loads of pictures and music!

Researchers at Hong Kong's Chinese University have found what might be the safest way to store data: not in a safe, not in the cloud, but in bacteria!

Biostorage, the term for storing and encrypting information in organisms, has only existed for close to a decade, but scientists say the method could soon allow for text, images, music, or even video to be "recorded" in E. Coli, according to Discovery.

By encoding data in bacterial DNA, the information has a virtually limitless lifespan. As each bacteria reproduces, the data could be copied thousands of times. By mapping E. Coli's DNA, that data can be easily found and isolated.

Perhaps more importantly however, bacteria isn't susceptible to intrusion.

"Bacteria can't be hacked," Allen Yu, a student instructor, told Discovery.

"All kinds of computers are vulnerable to electrical failures or data theft. But bacteria are immune from cyber attacks. You can safeguard the information."

The data can be split into chunks and distributed between different bacterial cells, which helps overcome any storage space issues.

The most amazing part? Capacity.

Just one gram of data-storing bacteria could hold the same amount of data as up to 450, 2,000 GB hard drives, according to Computerworld.

In addition, researchers have also developed a three-tier security fence to safeguard the data, and created an encoding mechanism that ensures the data can't be disturbed by mutations in bacterial cells.

 After all, electronically-stored data is susceptible to electromagnetic pulses (EMPs), flooding, fire, power outages, and the age-old “having a building collapse on top of the server.”

The lyrics to “It’s a Small World After All" song was translated into a code based on the four letters that comprise DNA—A, G, T, and C—and manufacturing this code into artificial DNA, which was then inserted into bacteria such as E. coli. When the bacteria reproduced, the message was passed on through each generation, rendering it near-immortal. Even better, some types of bacteria can survive extreme conditions such as those that you’d find in a post-apocalyptic wilderness!

The Samsung galaxy Smart-watch!

Wrist watches, smart or otherwise, are simply not for everyone -- there are more smartphone users in the world, many times over, than there will ever be smartwatch owners. Despite the limited market for such a device, however, Samsung's decided it's time to join in on the fun. 
The Galaxy Gear, as we've known it to be called for a few weeks now, was hardly guarded with a level of secrecy that's become standard for a flagship smartphone, but as the device is finally official -- and expected to launch in more than 100 countries within weeks -- just how does it perform? Find our take after the break.

The centerpiece of the Galaxy Gear, as you may have read by now, is a 320 x 320-pixel, 1.63-inch AMOLED touchscreen. There's a speaker and a pair of mics for recording and playing back video content and communicating with a caller via the built-in dialer, which works with the native phone app in your connected Galaxy device. The Gear includes an 800MHz processor, a 315mAh battery, and -- in a somewhat surprising twist -- a BSI sensor and autofocus lens mounted in the wrist strap that's tasked with capturing 1.9-megapixel stills and 10-second video clips at 720p, 640 x 640 or VGA resolution with sound. That camera, designed for on-the-go captures where convenience, not image quality, is a priority, is paired with a pre-installed app called Memographer. That application, and dozens of others that will be available at launch, are key to boosting the Gear's appeal, and setting it apart from the competition.

Like other smartwatches we've seen and reviewed, such as the monochrome Pebble, the Gear organizes apps, watch faces and other pages in swappable cards. With such a limited display resolution, it's only possible to display one at a time, and that's where touch comes in. To navigate through the wearable's many cards, you can swipe with a finger. There's a single button, located on the right side. Press it once to go to the home screen. A double press launches S Voice, and a triple tap activates the "safety assistance" feature, which sends your location info to a saved contact, along with a message notifying them that there's an emergency.

We haven't been blown away by any smartwatch's performance, and that's much the case here. The Gear feels awfully sluggish, whether you're launching an app such as Evernote or Path, or swiping down from the home screen to activate the camera. Watch faces, which you can upload from the Gear's Android companion app, performed well, as did the Music card, which simply serves as a remote for any music app (native or third-party) currently active on a connected device.

The Gear is very much a first-generation device when it comes to usability, too; you can only load a total of 10 third-party apps, for example, due in no small part to the limited 4GB of built-in storage. The interface also feels a bit clunky and unpolished at times, and the S Voice feature, which responds to commands just like its smartphone and tablet counterparts, can only be activated by tapping the home button twice -- hardly convenient when you're running or riding a bike.

As for the device's physical appearance, it's a bit svelter than leaked reports would suggest, but it's still a substantial product. Some colors, such as Rose Gold and Mocha Gray, were designed with female users in mind, but with a design that's significantly larger than many traditional watches, it may be a bit too cumbersome for petite wrists. That said, we didn't find it too large for male users, who might prefer the JetBlack or Oatmeal color schemes. According to Samsung reps, sporty types might opt for Wild Orange or Lime Green, and considering third-party apps like RunKeeper and MyFitnessPal, along with the bundled pedometer, athletes are clearly a target demographic here.

Samsung opted for an industrial design instead of a more elegant finish. There are four visible screws above and below the face, for example, and the metal buckle, which houses the speaker, doesn't feel terribly well made. Many of the colors are a bit too "sporty" to be an appropriate fit for formal occasions or business attire, so unless you opt for an all-black Gear, you may end up leaving the watch at home more often than not. That wouldn't be a terrible call, however -- the embedded battery is rated for a day of "regular" use, which means more active users will be spending a lot of time attaching the watch to the bundled micro-USB-equipped plastic charging dock, which connects to the device through five metal leads on the rear.

As we've come to expect with many first-generation devices, the Gear has quite a few shortcomings, some of which likely have yet to come to light. The prototype devices we used were noticeably sluggish and occasionally unresponsive, S Voice is not entirely hands-free, and battery life has been pegged at a full day, at best. Perhaps the biggest setback, however, is that the Galaxy Gear is only compatible with the Note 3 and the new Note 10.1, and while it will likely work with the GS4 once that device gets an Android 4.3 update, we don't expect that it'll ever function with non-Samsung smartphones and tablets. Gear begins shipping on September 25th. Update: The gear will cost $299 when it starts shipping, though, customers in the US and Japan will have to wait 'til October to get their hands on one.

Source: Engadget

The Technology behind Transformers: A Nanotech dream?

It must be a good 20 years since I pondered the (fictional) technological underpinnings of Transformers, which has a Hollywood movie called the "Revenge of the Fallen."

For one: how could the main bad guy, Megatron, turn from an "arm-mounted fusion cannon" (huh?!) into a hulking beast of an evil robot? 

At an early age, I was chalking it up to fantasy and I suspended my disbelief while I watched the cartoons after school while eating a bowl of Froot Loops. But some are more willing to try to explain the technology and science behind the Transformers, I learned this morning. There is a Wikipedia entry on Transformers technology that, right now, is striving to bridge the gap between science and fantasy. One of my favorite sections ponders the notion of death among Transformers:

Death of a Transformer can follow irreversible (mortal) stasis lock or be caused by a sudden traumatic injury (such as a close-proximity nuclear explosion, or spark excision). A few weapons, such as a high powered fusion cannon, are known to be powerful enough to cause severe enough damage to immediately terminate a Transformer. Also, while the utter destruction of a body can and usually does cause death, a Transformer can often survive total dismemberment. Notable examples include Optimus Prime (during the Generation 1 series), Ultra Magnus (during the movie), and Waspinator (repeatedly).

 The technology behind Transformers involves advanced nanotechnology and even femtotechnology, a largely theoretically area involving the "manipulation of excited energy states within atomic nuclei."

Hey, we've got a lot of folks in Maryland working in the nanotech field. If using this tech to build robots that change from boring cars to steely warriors isn't likely, then why bother?

Haha. Kidding.

Seriously, nanotech is a young but choppy field. There are detractors and skeptics on one side, who either think a lot of it is overstated marketing bunk, or potentially dangerous. (One guy wrote a book called "Nano-Hype: The Truth Behind the Nanotechnology Buzz."

On the other side are businesses, universities and researchers who are pushing for breakthroughs that could be brought to market and maybe save lives, if nanotech gets more incorporated in medical practice. Johns Hopkins' Whiting School of Engineering has a nanotech research area, and the university has its own Institute for NanoBioTechnology, too. And the University of Maryland has its own Nanocenter.

Do they see a Transformers future?

Toyota gives 'space robot' a voice!

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Toyota robonaut Kirobo strikes a typical tourist pose at a porthole on the International Space Station, with its notoriously temperamental solar panel array in the background.

In 1961 Yuri Gagarin became the first man to speak from space. Fifty-two years later, Toyota has helped give a voice to the first robot to talk while orbiting the earth.

Toyota "Robonaut" Kirobo's first words echoed Neil Armstrong's iconic moon-landing: "On August 21, 2013, a robot took one small step towards a brighter future for all."

Toyota provided Kirobo's voice recognition software and plans to use experience gained from the orbital experiments to improve the range of interactive conversation technologies it uses in its cars.

Kirobo, just 34cm tall, left earth on 4 August from Japan's Tanegashima Space Centre in the Kounotori 4 cargo vehicle, which docked at the International Space Station after six days in orbit.

CHAT ROOM

Kirobo will be joined later this year by Koichi Wakata, who will become the first Japanese astronaut to take command of the orbiting space station, and will take part in the first conversation between a human and a robot in space, in the Japanese Experiment Module, nicknamed "Kibo" after the Japanese word for hope.

Kirobo and his earth-bound twin Mirata are two humanoid communication robots developed under the Kibo Robot Project, a joint research project between Toyota, Dentsu, Robo Garage, the University of Tokyo's Research Centre for Advanced Science and Technology and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency!

Tesla's Earthquake machine!

Nikola Tesla is primarily thought of as an electrical genius, but he also was responsible for a number of mechanical devices. One of the most notorious of these was his "Earthquake Machine" otherwise known as the Tesla Oscillator. The machine which Tesla tested was small, around seven inches long, and weighing only one or two pounds; something "you could put in your overcoat pocket". In 1898, Tesla's New York lab was nearly shaken to pieces with this ittle device, operated by only five pounds of air pressure acting against a special pneumatic piston device. The whole assembly was designed to be powered by steam pressure. Tesla was experimenting with ways to transmit motive power through the Earth! Large versions of these oscillators, weighing perhaps 200 pounds, and being about three feet high could transmit usable motive power anywhere on te entire planet. As fantastic as it sounds, this device can also locate ships, submarines and buildings anywhere on a global scale.

Steam would be forced into the oscillator, and exit through a series of ports, the net effect of which was to cause the armature to vibrate at high speed, within is casing. The casing was by necessity very strong, as temperatures due to pressure heating in the upper chamber exceeded 200 degrees, and the pressure reached 400psi. Other versions of the machine were created, designed to produce electrical power, both alternating and direct, (without the need for rectifiers).

The Plan!

With this in mind, I began to think of a way in which I could build one of these oscillators more easily than with a steel pressure vessel. Since the air piston relies on compressed air to effect the oscillating motion, it seemed to me that another way of forcing the piston to move might be useful. I hit upon the idea of using a magnetic field to create part of the motion. Having variable frequency AC would be the perfect solution to this problem, allowing flawless tuning of the oscillation frequencies with a simple coil setup, without the need for air or steam at all.

How it works is as follows. Compressed air entering the inlet port forces the piston head upwards. However, the piston shaft is impeded from moving upwards by the action of opposing magnetic fields between the two coils. The current in the coils can be varied to create a field of specific strength, and therefore amount of force required for the piston to rise. The field pushes down and the air pushes up. When the air push exceeds the field push, the piston will shoot upwards, but as soon as the piston head rises above the air vent port, the cavity will de-pressurize. When that happens, the field will slam the piston downwards, and the hammer head will strike the steel plate at the base. By varying the air pressure and magnetic field strength, any range of frequencies desired could be created.

Bringing the House Down!

Everything in nature vibrates at a certain frequency. When an object is vibrated at its natural resonance, it begins to undergo severe shock, as it tries to shake itself apart. It would be ludicrous to imagine that a tiny oscillator could by itself bring down a building, if not for the principle of resonance. Like a child on a swing, only a very small force is required to maintain a fairly large reciprocating motion. A major vibration could be established in a house by coinciding each stroke of the piston with the return of the individual vibrations through the building to where the oscillator is. Every time the piston hits, it magnifies the force a little more. At frequencies of 1000Hz, the force build-up can be very appreciable! The frequency of resonance is linked to the time it takes for the vibrations to spread out through the building, reverberate, and the "echoes" to return to the oscillator again. By finding the correct frequency, ANY structure can be destroyed. In fact, the larger it is, the lower the resonant frequency is, so the easier it is to destroy. Tesla once joked that he could split the Earth with one of these devices, and no-one ever knew if he was joking!

Rinspeed sQuba World’s first Underwater-Submarine Car!

World first Submarine Car sQuba was design and made by Rinspeed.

Rinspeed is a Swiss based automobile manufacturer and tuning designer company was founded in 1979 by Frank Rinderknecht. Rinspeed have specialization in restoring the classic and vintage cars, tuning and modify the modern cars like Porsches and Subarus. Each year they design the exotic concept car for the Geneva Motor Show.

sQuba is a Rinspeed concept car debuted at the 2008 Geneva Motor Show, built around the Lotus Elise is the world’s first car that can be driven both on land and underwater.

Rinspeed founder and CEO Frank M. Rinderknecht sQuba concept car were inspired by the 1977 James Bond film “The Spy Who Loved Me”. James bond drive the animated Lotus Esprit in the movie. Rinspeed founder wanted to build a car that could move underwater like a submarine. It took founder 30 year to accomplish his desire.

sQuba call as the first real submersible car is a zero-emission all electric vehicle. It got three electric motors one for to drive on land and two motors to drive underwater. It can be submerged to a depth of 10 metres (33 ft), the car’s top land speed is 120 km/h (75 mph). On the surface of water, the top speed is 6 km/h (3.2 kn; 3.7 mph) and underwater it is 3 km/h (1.6 kn; 1.9 mph). According to Rinspeed, sQuba is made open cockpit to allow the occupants to escape easily in case of emergency

The price of the sQuba is $172,000: Check the price at the Rinspeed official site.